The Culprit

Let me first begin by saying this. You can get one of these here.

Alright, alright. It’s not quite as bad as I make it sound in the headline. I bought this mouse with some Christmas money off ebay. It’s red. It has three buttons. Well… it HAD three buttons. Until today.

I spend a lot of time at work and at home on my middle mouse button. I use it for navigation in just about every 3d app in existence. I also use the mouse in general about this much, which is how we got here in the first place. After a long day of working in 3d apps and spinning models and pushing verts, I come home to do what? I work on the same stuff. My wrists and hands are starting to suffer for it already, but I know enough to know that I can stave off the worst of RSI by being careful. Hence, the red ebay crapmouse. I’d heard a long while back that upright mice are supposed to hold your wrist in a better position for long term use or something. The truth is, until it broke, it was actually really nice. After an entire week of use (only) I noticed almost no pain or soreness in my hands.

Which was quite a relief. For a time.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to pass.

I noticed that I couldn’t zoom in on my model. I tried again and noticed that there as no clicking in the wheel, only when I actually pressed the button. I ended up taking it apart at work and checking to see if I could fix it. Nope. The little plastic pin that acts as an axle for the scroll wheel just snapped clean off. When I put it back together, the button didn’t even work anymore.

Sigh.

Oh well. The thing was only $12 with shipping, and it made my hand feel a bit better for a while. Now I know that the key is probably just changing input devices frequently enough. TL;DR: upright mouse good, but not this one. Keep that hand in shape, and use JFT.